Comcast or electrician does ethernet wiring?

janesylviaNovember 2, 2012

I'd like to have my house ethernet wired (cat6a or cat6 line), so all the computers in each room can be wire-connected. It's a 30-year-old house in the bay area with flat roof and underground crawl space. I don't know if comcast or electrician would do it.

Basic handyman skills to run the cable.
Basic techie skills, tools and knowledge to install the connectors on the ends of the cables and, if needed, assist in hooking up your network.
I would expect the COMCAST hourly rate to be a lot more than you should have to pay.

My house has cat5e in all the rooms (actually 2 cat5e and two RG6). One cat5e is for wired internet and the other is for telephone. Handyman to run the wires. If you look at Youtube, you can find all sorts of videos to help you crimp connectors and use punchdown blocks to add the end connectors.

Get someone that is experienced in termination, ran the wires myself and then found that termination is not at all easy. If I was to do it again I would have an experienced person do the entire job. There is nothing like having to go back and troubleshoot connections when you find they do not work.

Thank you so much for all the responses. I found the Netgear Powerline adapter for wired connection, Netgear XAVB2501-100NAS Powerline. Is it good enough for a house of 1800 sq ft or is ethernet still the better way to go?

The one issue between electrician and "telephone jacks" people is that cat5 wiring is not just phone or electrical wiring. Assuming people are professionals they will read the instructions and install things correctly, but even in my own house I had to chase behind the electrical contractor pointing out that he wasn't quite doing cat5 terminations right. (It would have been fine for phone, but it wasn't going to work for networkng).

The one issue between electrician and "telephone jacks" people is that cat5 wiring is not just phone or electrical wiring. Assuming people are professionals they will read the instructions and install things correctly, but even in my own house I had to chase behind the electrical contractor pointing out that he wasn't quite doing cat5 terminations right. (It would have been fine for phone, but it wasn't going to work for networkng).

Is it enough to have my office and family room added ethernet outlets or is it better to have all the bedrooms ethernet outlets added? Living room has a cable modem coax cable outlet, do I still need to add a ethernet outlet?

"Is it enough to have my office and family room added ethernet outlets or is it better to have all the bedrooms ethernet outlets added?"

Wired Ethernet in the bedrooms is a good idea since it can allow for streaming video to Blu-Ray players/televisions from services such as Netflix and Hulu. It can also allow for streaming of audio & video from network attached storage devices or for video security systems.

"Living room has a cable modem coax cable outlet, do I still need to add a ethernet outlet?

Yes, unless you want all those cables coming into your living room. Typically you pick some type of utility space with AC power to place the router. Then, the cables from each of the rooms terminates at this point where they are connected to the router. The output from the cable modem is also fed to the input to the router.

If they router does not have enough RJ45 connections, you can expand it with a network switch or only plug in the connections which will currently be used.

Whilst you're doing it, go for it. I'd wire for all possible contingencies, so more is more.

I'd use a low-voltage/media specialist over an electrician and definitely over a cable co person. Electricians tend not (in my experience) to be a little less particular about media/data wiring, and for best results, especially if you're wanting gigabit speeds, you need to do it right.

Comcast et al techs are usually paid for piece work, so they're not usually into clean, well-hidden wiring. Expect lots of ugly surface wiring.